Communities of Practice

APC Week 25 - Activity One

What is a community of practice?

Reflecting on the term 'communities of practice' it is amazing how many communities you are actually part of as as an educator. I personally see my communities that I am part of as an integral part of who I am as an educator. These communities are loosely intertwined with me moving in and out of these communities at various times, depending on what is happening within my practice. These communities are: 

My immediate teaching community at Our Lady of the Assumption School (OLA); part of the Leadership Team and Team Leader at OLA; my Professional Learning Network - Twitter, Virtual Learning Network (VLN); Mindlab face to face community as well as our Google+ community; part of the wider Catholic schools community as well as a Community of Learning which is currently being established. 

Wenger defines community of practice "as groups of people who share a concern or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by an interaction on an ongoing basis" (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p.4). 

What is the purpose and function of your practice? In what ways do you contribute to the community of your practice?
As an educator, I belong to a very large community of practice. There are many communities within communities in this large group. Collectively they have a purpose to not only educate and meet the learning needs of students but also to ensure their own continuous development of professional learning.

In my community of practice, I am a Year 5/6 Team Leader at Our Lady of the Assumption School. I am committed to leading this team on a journey of making learning better for our students. As part of this journey, we are working hard as a team to fully develop a collaborative teaching practice. As we have grown in this role, so has our reflective practice. This involves professional reflective blogs, we regularly meet, either formally or informally. Discussions are held across teams and of course, as a staff. The best reflective time though are those little snatches of conversations you have in passing as they are usually 'in the moment' conversations. Dawson (2012) identifies that reflective practice leads to better learning and when reflection is shared, it is most effective. I personally also find online forums, especially Twitter a great place to engage with my wider community of practice.

As part of the leadership team community of practice, we are working together with the staff to see how this collaborative journey might look for us. We are working towards building not only a collaborative teaching staff but also a collaborative student learning community. This takes time to plan, ensuring that discussions are held, support is offered, professional learning is given to help understand the 'why' of this change and of course, reflecting on their journey in this process.

What are the core values that underpin your profession? Evaluate your practice with regard to these values.
I believe the core values that underpin my profession is relationships. A whole community of relationships:  relationships between colleagues,  relationships between teacher and student and relationship between teacher and parents. In order for my team to be successful, I need to build lasting meaningful relationships based on trust. With my students, also trust. Trust that I will be there for them. Trust that I will support and encourage them even when things go wrong. Engaging with parents, building a professional caring relationship - them entrusting me to do the right thing by their child. 

As a profession, we belong to many communities of practice. Actively engaging in these communities is the basis of continued growth in professional learning, both deliberate and incidental.
Let's get engaged!



Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.